US Solar Market Insight: 10 Gigawatts of Solar in US by Year End

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

In 2010, the global market installed 10 gigawatts of PV solar in a single year. This year the market will reach more than 34 gigawatts.

The 832 megawatts installed in the U.S. in Q2 2013 brings the cumulative operating PV capacity in the U.S. to 8,858 megawatts, according to GTM Research. And that means the U.S. will eclipse the 10-gigawatt-installed mark later this year.

In fact, the GTM Research team has crunched the numbers and, utilizing our state-of-the-art supercomputer, the SM-1000, has determined that the 10-gigawatt mark of solar installed in the U.S. will be achieved on October 18 at 3:14 p.m. When Mr. and Mrs. McKinley Morganfield power on a 5-kilowatt c-Si system on their guest house in Rolling Fork, Mississippi.

Ten gigawatts (nameplate capacity) is a significant milestone for the U.S. PV industry, but it warrants some perspective.

Solar power's capacity factor is low. That 10 gigawatts at 20 percent capacity factor might be equivalent to a few nuclear plants (there are about 100 nuclear plants in the U.S.). The U.S. wind industry has a cumulative 60 gigawatts on-line.

In any case, GTM Research expects 4.4 gigawatts of PV to come on-line in the U.S. this year, up from 3.3 gigawatts in 2012, and ten times what was installed in 2009.

Tom Werner, president and CEO of SunPower, commented to GTM, "As we pass these significant milestones, we’re witnessing the mainstreaming of solar. We realize that this is just the beginning. Solar is now cost-competitive with traditional energy sources, and we can make a serious dent in the multi-trillion-dollar global electricity market. At SunPower, we think it’s realistic to plan for obtaining a 1 percent share of this market, and that would make us ten times the size we are now.”